


Forty Minutes to Meltdown

by BloodyMary



Category: Warhammer 40.000
Genre: Black Comedy, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-11-28
Updated: 2013-11-28
Packaged: 2018-01-02 21:48:02
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1062016
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/BloodyMary/pseuds/BloodyMary
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Adept Makal is having a very bad day--and it's likely going to be his last day.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forty Minutes to Meltdown

Adept Makal thought somebody ought to have warned him that in the process of becoming closer to the blessed Machine one’s resistance to stress could lowered by a whole twenty percent. It had been precisely three hours and four seconds, since the first enemy ship had spilled from the warp. Since then, a pitched space battle had been joined and suddenly, the void shields and the thick metal walls around him did not seem so secure anymore. Two hours, seventeen minutes and fifty fives seconds had passed since the moment the enemy boarding party had breached the hull and two hours nineteen seconds since Adept Makal started wishing he could sweat. At this precise moment, the main reactor of the Servant of Unity had been critically damaged and the resulting explosion-  
  
“Forty minutes to meltdown,” a warm feminine voice announced. It didn’t sound particularly perturbed by the fact that it was going to die along with the ship, but then Machine Spirits were notoriously fickle.  
  
“Nonononono,” Makal muttered, his voice rising to a very unbefitting hysterical pitch. “Radja? Come in, woman!”  
  
He really had been overjoyed when he had found out he would be assigned to one of the most venerable ships in the whole Imperium. Who knew what secrets were still lurking in its depths? Of course, nobody informed him that the ship’s Machine Spirit communed with its adepts in that blasted calm voice. How could anyone fix anything when the thrice fracked thing sounded like it intended to have tea and crumpets?   
  
Ignoring the rune on another screen, he tried to focus on both raising his fellow adept and typing string after string of commands. The keyboard treated him to a shower of sparks, but seemed to relent after he started muttering the appropriate litany. The rune began to blink, but whatever it was would have to wait. Even if it was the Admiral himself, Makal had more important things to do, like keeping them all alive, and that was not a simple task.  
  
“Radja!” he snapped again, only to realize that his fingers must have slipped and he had made several mistakes in the lines of command he had been frantically entering into the cogitator. For precisely thirty two seconds, he remained immobile; a frozen statue of a man. He tried to frantically find a way out, but his mind only supplied “we’re dead, we’re dead, we’re dead.”  
  
“Twenty minutes to meltdown,” the pleasant feminine voice announced. An odd crackle followed and the speaker started smoking.  
  
Radja remained silent and he felt that his digestive system was starting to do very unpleasant things with his lunch.   
  
Then the vox came alive, but instead of the expected buzz of binary, he heard a holler of pure unadulterated fury, fuelled by panic.  
  
“Adept! Why is this fracking core not fixed yet?!” Admiral Toben roared. His cheeks and neck were red and Makal could see his chest straining, as he took large nervous gulps of air.   
  
“Well, it seems most of my colleagues managed to get themselves killed in one way or another,” Makal replied, his voice quivering dangerously. “So, we’re a bit understaffed, as it were. Which is to say, we are horribly understaffed and I think Adept Radja got herself killed, and she’s—was the one who got along with the Machine Spirit best. Also, the fire keeps on spreading, and judging from how we’re shaking we’re taking hits still and that’s not really helping us concentrate. By us, I mean, the remaining few, who are probably going to fail, because we were doomed the moment your men let that boarding party slip through.”  
  
Toben stared. Then, he stared some more, to finish it off with presenting a very apt likeness of a fish.  
  
“What,” he said his voice flat.   
  
“Oh my,” Makal moaned. “Oh nononononono. I seem to have completely mistyped. It’s my hands. They’re shaking. I didn’t know they still could shake, but here they are, shaking. Anyway-“  
  
“Ten minutes to meltdown,” the pleasant feminine voice announced.  
  
Toben seemed to have gone grey in a matter of seconds. His breathing had not calmed down, however.  
  
“As I was about to say, I might have accidently—and I would like to underline that this was an accident caused by all that unnecessary stress of being yelled at and trying to fix a big damn hole in a reactor while most of my colleagues are dead—I might have accidentally routed the power from the auxiliary reactors to the main one. Which is going to melt down any moment.”  
  
“What,” Toben repeated, his voice remaining free of any sign of emotions.  
  
“We’re dead,” Makal answered. “Well, not dead right now, but as it were, metaphorically dead, because we only have minutes until this ship explodes, and I’m afraid there’s no way for us to survive that. It was a pleasure-“  
  
“Oh, shut up, you motherfracking cogboy!” Toben finally snapped, or to be precise, and a servant of the Omnissiah needed to be precise, exploded. The Admiral’s face turned a rather unpleasant shade of purplish red and the Adept started wondering about the state of the man’s cardio-vascular system.  
  
“That was quite uncalled for,” Makal replied, managing a disgruntled sniff. “I’m doing my best here and you could try to show some-“  
  
“Five minutes to meltdown,” the Machine Spirit announced politely.  
  
“I said shut up!” Toben roared. Then, without any further ado, he turned away and continued yelling, though now at the bridge crew, who unfortunately Makal could not see. “You heard tin-for-brains! We’re all going to die, but by the Emperor, I will not let my death go unpunished!”  
  
Makal stared, wondering why his digestive system was trying to eject itself through his mouth. It was a most disconcerting feeling.  
  
“Full speed ahead! We are taking the nearest enemy with us!” Toben cried.  
  
Makal curled up next to the cogitator, feeling almost giddy. It was as if he had been an engine and somebody had released the built up steam that was powering it.   
  
“Have a nice day,” the Machine Spirit stated.


End file.
